Jellybeans

After four years and five different medical software programs, we are in training for yet another new system, this one light years beyond anything we even knew existed and state of the art in sophisticated technology, designed to be completely paperless. After a morning of training, we were feeling trapped in a landscape we didn't recognize, listening to a dialect of computer-ese we didn't speak, cast adift in a sea of jargon that made no sense.

Several hours in, someone asked a question and our perky training rep gave us a sweet, patient smile. Well, she said cheerfully, If that happens, you just check your D Jellybeans.

Jellybeans? As in bunnies and Easter eggs?

I heard the words but couldn't quite make any sense of them - what possible connection did any of this have to Easter candy? When I looked up, I saw four other faces all with the same dazed expression that I was sure was on my face. I looked back over my notes - hieroglyphics I was reasonably sure I would never be able to translate or remember once training was ended - but found no reference to jellybeans. I listened to the rep explain further,

peered at the screen but found no enlightenment. Wait, I muttered, What the hell is a D Jellybean? Another sweet, patient smile and then a complicated, incomprehensible answer that seemed to have something to do with olives and intra-office communications. I found myself in the middle of a flashback - an early September day in the college bookstore where I worked, a student coming in and saying that he was looking for a mouse. Highly offended, I had indignantly told him that we did not harbor rodents and suggested that he try Food Services - where, it was rumored - mice ran wild and were plentiful. (True story, but I digress...)

We are a small office - one doctor, two nurses, two receptionists. We are accustomed to communicating verbally or in writing and the concept that the doctor would actually check his laptop to find out where he was supposed to go next rather than come to the front and ask was ludicrous.

At the end of the day, we were tired, discouraged, doubtful, and dizzied by the avalanche of information to be digested. We went our separate ways, foggily re-thinking our career choices but trying our best to be resolute and optimistic.

I was happier when mice had four feet tail and tails, jellybeans were candy, and change was what you got from a vending machine.